Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Chevy dealership
had been holding my daughter’s car hostage somewhere in the recesses of the
service center for three days. This all started with a red light on the dashboard,
I mean, the Driver’s Information Center.

No one was returning
my phone calls, so I figured the service adviser was using the Courtesy Multi-Point
Inspection to compile a list of scary engine problems just to freak me out. Late
on the third day, I finally got an email with “Your Vehicle is Ready!” in the
subject line.

Just walking in the customer
service center, I knew I already had at least two counts against me – my gender
and my hair color.

My daughter standing behind
me, I was pacing in front of the desks when the gray-haired
service adviser walked in. He dropped the car keys on the counter – just out of my reach
– and flipped through the six-page, color-coded ransom note. He spoke rapidly,
authoritatively, “We reset the blah blah sensor and it should be OK, but it
could blah blah blah at ANY TIME, and you need to watch out for the blah blah.
We also recommend that you have blah, blah, thingamajig, blah, with the
whatchamacallit and blah done. Just sign here, and we’ll get started.”

He opened the document
to the last page, turned it toward me and waited. At the bottom, highlighted in
yellow: “Estimate Total: $1,505.48,” “Thank you!” and the signature line.

My daughter – my youngest child – just turned 18. I didn’t realize
I was supposed to be feeling some trepidation about this fall’s impending
“empty nest,” but people keep asking me about it. “Are you going to be OK?”
“How will you handle it?” “What will you do?” Panicked, I turned to Wikipedia
for some answers. Turns out empty nest syndrome “is not a clinical condition.” Whew.

So, it’s good to know that occasionally, I can still fill
one of the jobs. Like when she rushes in the front door – jostling keys, purse,
a metal water bottle and her iPhone. Her status update trails off as she
hurries past me and toward her room.

“I have to go do blah, blah and the other thing, and then
I’m meeting blah blah for coffee, you remember her? And I’m already at 10,000
steps today! And oh I’m working until blah blah on Wednesday and Thursday so I
won’t be home until late and is there anything to eat in this house?”

Did you hear “chef” in there?

But when I was standing at that customer service desk, I knew for
certain that I was still employed.

This is like
breathing. I calmly looked up at the
service adviser.

“We don’t need all of
this work done today. But what I need to know from you is whether the car is safe
for this young lady to drive,” I said, nodding toward my pretty, blonde daughter.
“Because if you don’t tell me the truth, I will hold you personally responsible
for anything that goes wrong with that car.”

He looked a little
startled and said quickly, “Oh yes! But that’s a very pricey blah blah blah
part if you need to replace it.”

He said it as if it
were my fault, as if I were the engineer who designed the damn thing.

“You’re an ‘adviser,’
right? So, you’re just “advising?” (I resisted making the air quotes.)

“Um, well, yes ma’am.”

I reached across the
counter and snatched the paperwork and the keys off the counter. “We’re taking
the car,” I said forcefully. “Where is it?!”

Friday, June 16, 2017

It
was an ordinary school day, and we were sitting in the front cab of Dad’s
pickup at the end of our long driveway. That was long before he was “Pops,” by
the way. He was just Dad – or Daddy, if I needed something. I was 9 or 10.

We
were waiting for the school bus and its dreaded bumpy, milk-run ride into town.
That winter morning was dark and cold, and my big sister and I were slumping,
bundled up just like Randy would be years later in “A Christmas Story.”

The
truck was rumbling but hadn’t warmed up yet – and I was watching every breath
float to the ceiling. We weren’t really alert or motivated enough for conversation, but Dad
had the radio on, as usual.

I
heard the opening nonsensical lyrics, “a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh” and straightened
my back against the bench seat. Dad cranked the volume.

Within
seconds, my sister and I were singing loudly with the contagious song, “In the
jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…” Before the song had ended,
Dad was singing with us. And not too shabbily.

I used
to elbow him when we were standing up to sing in our small Baptist church. Invariably,
we were working our way through the first, second and fourth stanzas. He would
wink at me but still wouldn’t sing – just sort of mouth the words.

Now
that I think about it, the only other song I remember hearing him sing was “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.”

He
knew I was the World’s Biggest Elton John Fan and would tease me incessantly
about my teenaged obsession. One day, he was doing paperwork in his office, and
I was hanging around the radio. On came the musical intro, “When are you gonna
come down? When are you going to land? I should have stayed on the farm. I
should have listened to my old man.”

Dad
said, “Who is that? I like that song!”

“You
have excellent taste,” I replied. My turn to wink.

It
was years before I caught the irony of the song’s fourth line.

Dad
was a hard-working guy and didn’t believe in allowances – but it was mainly
because he didn’t want to have to remember how much and to whom he had handed
out money. In any case, if I asked, he gave – gruffly handing over a
five-dollar (or occasionally a ten-dollar) bill.

“Don’t
spend it all at the record store!” he would admonish me. I always mumbled a reply,
trying to avoid a white lie. We both knew it – come Saturday morning, I’d
end up at the mall, sorting through the album bins.